Right, but since each border router off of the public Internet can't advertise anything smaller than /24 (would *your* router accept an advertisement for 3.0.0.0/27?), each seperate office needs at least a /24. Yeah, NAT can take care of the internal addressing, but you're still stuck with the fact that you "only" can have 256 seperate border routers. I was never arguing that GE needs and/or deserves the full 3.0.0.0, as I have little or no experience with their network needs. (I do note, however, that I can't find *any* of 3.0.0.0/8 in Mae-East via Digex right now). I believe it was Lee Ving who said "Let's have a war/We need the space". Fini. eric
Okay...
RFC1918 host | | border router <----+ | | | | public internet | | | | | IP tunnel between corporate offices border router | preserving RFC1918 addressing. | | | | RFC1918 host <----+
With carefull use of NAT at appropriate points, it is technically possible to limit the amount of publicly visible addresses you use to (quite conceivably) 2 or 3 traditional class C blocks. Obviously this is not necessarily a real world model but you get the picture. I don't personally believe that an "enterprise" network should ever require more than one (PERHAPS two) /16 networks. When you get to ISPs and similar, the need for addresses will rise dramatically but it can still be kept under control if you're carefull about maintaining hierarchical addressing structures.
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